Steve Rogers v Big Brother
by Albaphet
Summary: The year is 1984. The world has been subsumed into three warring superstates and the grayness of totalitarianism has blotted out hope and freedom entirely. But a new threat to oppression and evil has emerged in the north. A champion in red, white and blue. For all of the cruelty and calculation of the Inner Party, how could they have ever foreseen this?
1. Chapter 1

Steve Rogers returned to the world in degrees. In a sparkle of dull, distant pain that wormed its way down his fingers. In the insistent plinking of ice water on the back of his neck. In the distant rumble of aircraft engines somewhere overhead.

Engines…

There was something bizarrely familiar about that. Like the distorted echo of the jet engines he could hear were some reflection of a half forgotten memory. He opened his eyes.

Found that, for a confusing moment, nothing before him made any sort of sense. Battered metal walls, long jagged gash in one that admitted a stream of brilliant sunlight. Looking directly into it was like staring at a magnesium flare. Rogers tried to turn his head, muscles cooperated only begrudgingly. Odd feeling that he was moving his muscles and ligaments and bones the wrong way. Like they'd snap and tear if he pushed any further.

God…

How cold he was. How sore. How hurt and confused and-

He froze. The jet engines were closer now, heightening in pitch, first to a whine, then a shriek. Rogers felt the hair on the back of his neck try to rise, but he was still too stunned to be more than distantly alarmed.

Closer and closer, the noise of the jet rattling his teeth, boring into his very mind. Then the beam of sunlight coming in through the ceiling of his strange little enclosure blinked out for an instant. Came back. The jet had buzzed right over him, Rogers realized.

He tried to sit up, was unable to lever himself more than a few inches away from the wall he'd crumpled against before he slid helplessly back into position.

"Ow…" He managed to say. Hardly recognized the creaking groan that came from his own throat. That scared him. And the fear afforded his cold numbed mind some much needed clarity.

He needed to remember where he was. That was the first thing. The second would be getting out before he froze to death. He couldn't remember how long he'd been…

Was this a bomber?

Rogers blinked. Managed to force one hand up to the wall. Felt the rivets studding the metal, evidence of careful engineering.

It _was_ a bomber…

He processed this information slowly. Looked around the interior of the fuselage more carefully and was momentarily embarrassed that he hadn't recognized his location sooner.

But even as he stared he felt fresh confusion rise within him. The layout of this plane was strange, bizarrely familiar but still deeply alien. Definitely not American or British.

No…this had to be a Nazi bomber.

And with that everything clicked suddenly into place. Christ…the war, the mission, his fight to keep the Nazis from dropping anthrax bombs all over the East Coast. The damage the bomber had taken in that struggle…a cold white landscape rushing up at him as he held grimly to the controls…

He'd held for as long as he could. He remembered that now. Had jettisoned the bombs into the ocean, where they'd never harm anyone or anything. Had even smiled grimly at the thought of Hitler and his gaggle of parading fascist stooges in Berlin hearing the news of their failure.

Then the bomber had slammed into the ground, and all had gone to gray.

And yet…somehow he was alive. Stunned and hurt, yes, but definitely alive. Rogers didn't think that the afterlife would _hurt_ quite as much as this.

He'd obviously been out for a while too. Enough for the bomber to settle in the snow and the last hissing ticks of the ruined engines to fade. Rogers tried to sit up again, managed to lever himself into a slightly better position now, biting back a hiss of pain as he did so. Trying to get his muscles to work was like stretching cold taffy…he almost felt like they'd snap sooner than expand.

But at the same time he welcomed the pain. It mingled elaborately with the threads of joy he could feel welling up within him, the realization that he was still kicking, still ready to take the fight to Hitler and his stooges.

Vision blurred to static for a moment as he forced himself into a kneeling position, massaging numb legs with hands that bristled with pins and needles. He could remember having to soak his hands in hot water after childhood snowball fights…just so his fingers would start to work again. This felt something like that.

From this new vantage point Rogers could see more of the fuselage. Could see that the cockpit had crumpled inwards…had probably tossed him back during the crash, right into a steel bulkhead.

But where was all of the equipment? Rogers had remembered the bomber being stuffed with ammunition and flares and all sorts of goodies. The Nazis crewing the beast had been expecting heavy resistance from the Air Force. And yet all of it was gone now. Maybe thrown from the plane during the crash?

Swept out by the little river of ice water burbling along the bottom of the fuselage? It was vaguely troubling, but Rogers didn't let it distract him from his quest to get his legs working again.

Part of him was frustrated by the slow progress. It demanded that he leave the bomber as soon as possible and establish a perimeter. Perhaps hunt down a Nazi flare or two to signal that jet that had buzzed him earlier. Doubtlessly that had been an American fighter tasked with searching for him.

But even as he gritted his teeth and kneaded at his stubborn, cold locked muscles, Rodgers chided himself gently. _You've just survived an air crash,_ he said to himself, _one that would definitely have killed virtually anyone else. It's okay. Take your time._

That calmed him a little and by the time he had managed to get unsteadily to his feet, Rodgers even felt like taking a brief jog once he got outside. To shake the last of the cold from his system. He burned hotter than other people thanks to the super-soldier serum, and exercise only exacerbated that. Of course, getting his hands on a survival kit and building a fire wouldn't hurt either.

He stood there in the fuselage, hunched over like an old man (bombers were not designed to hold six foot six super-soldiers), looking around him.

There was a crunched door that had, once upon a time, led out over the wing of the bomber, but from the way the downed Nazi bomber was tilted Rogers knew that if he forced it open then all he'd be faced with would be snowpack.

He shuffled around, splashing through snowmelt, and then paused.

His shield.

Where was his shield?

It wasn't on his back…so it had most definitely been knocked away during the crash. Rodgers looked around the fuselage. Caught sight of no red, white and blue emblazoned shield.

"Okay…" He said aloud, "I was thrown back into the bulkhead during the crash," a glance back at the sizable dent he'd made, "I had my shield then…so it should be around here somewhere…unless…" His eyes dropped to the newly formed creek passing through the bottom of the fuselage.

Oh. Okay. It had been swept into the mangled cockpit by the waters.

Bracing himself on the wall, Rogers hobbled forward, leaving a quiet stream of quasi-profanities behind him. Poked his head into the darkened cockpit. Was greeted by a crunched mess of metal and shredded fabric. The occasional drip of water from a shriveled hand that stuck from the jumble, like a neighbor waving hello.

Ah…the co-pilot. Rogers averted his eyes from the protruding arm, knelt painfully down and scanned the bottom of the cockpit. But even as he caught sight of a familiar gleam of silvery metal, something started to reverberate in the back of his mind.

Something troubling.

He straightened back up, shield held loosely in one hand. Looked down from his hand to that of the dead Nazi in the co-pilot's chair.

It was shriveled. Blue-brown, spotted with patches of decay.

Rogers took an uneasy step back.

That took an awful lot longer than just a few hours or days to happen. Especially in sub-zero temperatures.

Rogers turned, limped as quickly as he could along the ruined fuselage of the Nazi bomber.

Just how long had be been unconscious?


	2. Chapter 2

In the end Rogers had to use brute force to get himself out of the plane. In the waist gunner's gallery a section of wall had been torn away by the impact of the crash. Out beyond it was the bluish glow of ice. Taking the jagged edges of the rip carefully in his hands Rogers expanded the rip.

The effort made him feel dizzy and he had to take a moment to catch his breath before feeling ready to continue. He thought back to the night-time talks he had had with Dr. Erskine so many years before. Concerning the super-soldier serum and its theorized effects.

Erskine had likened the body of a super-soldier to a white hot coke furnace. A terrific amount of energy could be stored away in such a small space, burning slow but _hot._ Rogers had listened as the old German doctor spoke about muscle fiber density, the role of mitochondria in enhanced human cells…all sorts of medical jargon that hadn't held much meaning to him at the time.

Back then he'd been a fine arts student, way in over his head, just as scared as he was determined to take on fascism and all of the evil that it represented.

He'd taken the time to learn more about just what the serum had done to him later…after Erskine had been assassinated, after the government had told him in no uncertain terms that he, Steve Rogers of Brooklyn, was the only super-soldier fighting for the cause of America. For the cause of freedom.

His muscles were denser. His cells different somehow, packed with energy producers and some sort of strange element that allowed him to heal and bounce back from things that would kill anyone else.

And all of that meant that he could go for a long time without food and water. Without sleep. Without anything really. He'd once gripped onto a fifty pound weight and sat at the bottom of an Army swimming pool for thirty minutes. Had come up more because he was getting bored than because of any pulmonary distress.

He was a super-soldier. That fact seemed even more blatantly obvious than before somehow. Anybody else would have frozen to death by now. Would have been killed by the blunt impact of the crash. By the hiatus between crash and consciousness…however long that was.

He squeezed from the downed bomber, pressed between the fuselage and what appeared to be a glacial creek. Splashing down, freezing water came up to Rogers' waist. He slogged against the current, around the shredded tail of the Nazi bomber, and sat gratefully down on an ice bank that had frozen over the side of the stream.

The bomber had slammed down along a creek bed, Rogers realized as he examined his surroundings. That had probably saved it from flying apart completely.

Rogers glanced around him once more. Waded upstream until he found a place he could climb out of the creek. Standing atop the bank, panting, almost blinded by the glare of sun on snow, he reached absently for his goggles.

Not there. His helmet had been dislodged…and he hadn't even thought to look for it.

The landscape around him was fairly flat, but for a curiously shaped mountain some miles away. It seemed to have had a bite taken out of its peak, and…and there was no snow on its slopes.

Huh.

Where the hell had he landed?

Somehow it seemed vaguely familiar, but then again he'd been plenty of places. Sometimes he had deva vu for no reason at all.

More mountains clouded the horizon behind the strange nearest peak. Rogers examined their topography. Thought back to the hours of geography lessons he'd taken while in training. Memorizing entire swathes of territory just in case.

But most of that had been in Nazi occupied Europe, or the United States. He, if he remembered the heading of his course correctly, was somewhere in eastern Canada.

Another curious thing…the weird snowless peak was shimmering. Like it was a hot day out. Rogers squinted. Tried to tell himself that he was seeing things, but that couldn't be the case. He had better eyesight than anyone on the planet.

Through the shimmers he could see bare expanses of rock, little streamers of smoke rising from a few occasional spots.

"Boy…this just keeps getting odder." He sighed and felt for his utility belt.

Gone. Figures…

Atop the peak…the 'bite' taken out of it looked an awful lot like a crater. Had he just missed the eruption of a volcano?

Rogers sighed. Tracked the trajectory of the creek idly. Supposed that he now knew why there was so much snowmelt flooding down from the hills.

"That would've been a neat thing to see…" He said absently, then turned his back to the odd mountain and scanned the horizon to his south.

A few battered looking trees, but for the most part just emptiness. The mountain range curved around to head south as well. Rogers stamped his feet in the snow, breaking through a thin crust of brittle, glassy ice.

"South," he said, and tested the death of the snow again, pleased that it didn't seem deep enough to prohibit easy travel, "I'll just head south until I hit a road or the U.S. border."

Simple. Easy.

He could walk. The breeze would wick the water from his clothes and the sun would cheer him. The exercise would loosen his muscles and along the way he could stop by a thicket and get himself a walking stick.

As he decided this he supposed that it had to be sometime in late spring. It was warm enough to be May or even early June. And if that was the case then he'd been out cold for one or two months.

Long enough for the bomber to have settled into the creek. Long enough for the dead Nazi in the cockpit to have begun to decompose. Short enough that everything he knew would still be there.

He just had to go and get it.

But even as those happy, satisfied thoughts crossed his mind, he heard a distant chopping sound. A thwack-thwack-thwack that seemed to punish the very air. Rogers hadn't heard anything quite like it before. The only thing he could compare it to was the engine of a piston fired fighter plane…only much slower. Heavier.

It was coming from the south, at least a thousand feet above him. Rogers still wasn't entirely sure how he could tell the altitude of aircraft just by sound…but somehow he knew. Somewhere deep in his mind unknowable calculations played out. And returned right answer after right answer after right answer.

He stood stock still.

A new type of plane? Maybe a civilian plane…Canadian…curious to see the volcano. It made sense to him.

But rather than a plane, Rogers caught sight of something entirely different.

It took him a moment to make sense of what he was seeing. Somebody had taken the heavy, brick-like body of a cargo plane, shortened its wings and fixed great big upwards facing propellers atop them. Another rotor buzzed like a hornet on its tail and Rogers cocked his head, perfectly confused.

He had seen early, experimental helicopters in Army storage before…but those things had been meant for one person. They buzzed like wasps when they took off and had an alarming habit of crashing the moment equilibrium even flirted with the idea of unbalance.

This…this monstrosity flew in a heavy, straight line, utterly stable, trailing diesel fumes behind it.

"The hell have you done Stark?" Rogers wondered aloud. But there was no Stark logo on the approaching helicopter. No U.S. or even Canadian military emblems either. Just…a great big crimson V.

Rogers took a step backwards, almost unconsciously. There was something very wrong about this. But before he could decide whether to remain in place or beat a retreat back to the creek bed, a great voice thundered from the helicopter. The machine, Rogers realized faintly, had an enormous loudspeaker wired to its front.

"Ungood comrade! Ungood!" The voice boomed and Rogers saw the helicopter dip lower, still heading directly at him, "current dayorder minipax: vacate doubleplushasty! Fullstop! Fullstop!"

Rogers was caught completely off guard. The voice certainly _sounded_ right, full of military vigor and iron authority…but what the hell was it _saying?_

He'd never heard anything like this strange, broken language being bellowed at him. Rogers held his arms up in display that he was unarmed, clearly alarmed.

"My name is Captain Steve Rogers!" He shouted back as the helicopter came to a hovering halt about a hundred yards in front of him, floating maybe fifty feet off the ground. "I was shot down in that bomber over there!" He wasn't sure if the people inside of the weird helicopter had even heard him. The voice started up again.

"Speedwise retreat _now_ comrade! Ante-unlife now!"

And suddenly there were men leaning from the sides of the helicopter, rifles aimed. Rogers stared for a half second, just bewildered enough to hesitate.

From what he could see, the men in the helicopter wore dark gray uniforms, baggy and strangely utilitarian. Like he was being threatened by the world's most fascistic janitors.

Then he whipped his shield around rifles cracked. A bullet caromed off of one side of the shield and Rogers zigged to the right, another round zipping wide to his left. The helicopter was lowering, preparing to set down. In just a few moments the soldiers inside would come spilling out.

And that would be their mistake. If they were in the air then they might have given Rogers some serious trouble, if only because he couldn't easily reach them. But on the ground…

Another bullet hit the shield. Rogers kept low, hiding his legs from view, making a wide arc towards the creek bed. The helicopter bounced down to earth, none too gently, spraying snow and ice everywhere. And soldiers jumped out, at least a half dozen of them, wide eyed, gloved hands clutching rifles.

They stuck close together, almost in a phalanx, recognizing that Rogers was unarmed but for his shield. Behind them the helicopter stayed put, rotors still spinning. Behind the glass Rogers could see a pair of similarly uniformed men. One was still holding a radio transmitter, Rogers supposed that it was him who had spoken.

Neither pilot seemed to be armed with anything long range, and from what Rogers could pick up the helicopter was unarmed as well. This was a troop transport, he deduced as he picked his way towards the creek bed, the grey uniformed soldiers racing to intercept him.

They were firing in volleys now, solid sheets of lead cracking against his shield like a series of hard punches. It bruised his arm, rattled his teeth, but Rogers hung steady. Waiting for them to get closer.

From the moment they had bunched up Rogers had known what he was going to do. If they had spread out then he would have jumped into the creek bed immediately, to limit their mobility, to use the bomber as shelter. But the strange soldiers, each with an ominous crimson V on his right shoulder, no other rank insignia, had crowded together. Clearly hoping to knock their adversary off balance and then shoot him dead when he tripped up.

And that might have worked on nearly anyone else…but they weren't messing with just anyone.

They, Rogers thought vengefully, had picked a fight with Captain America. And it was time for them to pay.

A volley slammed him back, but instead of holding firm Rogers rolled with the impact of the shots, spinning around in a graceful circle, like an Ancient Greek discus champion. And just like that old champion, at the end of his turn he let his discus fly.

The shield weighed somewhere between thirty and forty pounds, and it hit the bunched squad of soldiers like a fully loaded cement truck. A rifle barked helplessly into the sky, the soldier who had born the brunt of the hit flipped completely over, landing on his head in the snow.

Rogers raced forward, muscles burning, adrenaline and righteous fury making up for injury and cold and fear. Only two soldiers had been left standing. One raised his rifle, only got it halfway up before Rogers wrenched it out of his grip and grabbed him by the front of his uniform.

He had just enough time to see utter terror form on the face of his quarry before he whipped him into the other soldier, knocking them both headlong into the snow.

A hand gripped his ankle. Rogers twisted free and stamped down on the man's arm. Heard his elbow pop like a firecracker. Kicked another soldier in the jaw as he attempted to rise, cracked the butt of the rifle down on the helmeted head of another.

And then it was quiet, but for the rising whine of the helicopter rotors. The pilots were attempting to escape.

Rogers took a step back, raised the rifle to his shoulder. Put a shot through the windshield, starring the glass and spraying blood from the pilot's shoulder. And suddenly the helicopter was dipping to the side, the pilot yanking hard on the controls in utter panic. The rotors met snow and the helicopter tipped onto its side in a plume of snow and ice crystals, the rotors shattering into a thousand pieces.

He strode forward, fired a shot into the co-pilot's side door as the man tried to open it. Heard a choked scream from inside, then shouting.

"Big Brother! Big Brother!" Over and over again. Like a deranged sort of chant. No reply from the beaten squad that had been sent after Rogers.

Rogers stepped around the front of the helicopter, staring through a windshield webbed with cracks. The co-pilot stared wildly back at him, blood running freely from his nose. He was struggling with the flap on a hip holster.

"Don't." Rogers said. The co-pilot ignored him, muttering his strange chant under his breath now. Rogers shattered the cracked windshield with the butt of his rifle and dragged the co-pilot out, throwing him headlong into the snow. His pistol bounced free and Rogers stepped firmly on top of it. The co-pilot huddled into the snow, wide eyed with fright and a horrible sort of fanaticism that Rogers had only ever seen before in the eyes of the most heavily indoctrinated SS butchers.

"Who are you?" He growled, aiming his rifle at the co-pilot, glancing back to make sure that the beaten squad was staying still (they were), "and what the _hell_ are you doing on Canadian soil?"

The co-pilot stared, confusion momentarily winning out over zealousness. Then he sneered.

"Ungood," he said, almost mockingly, "unCanada, unAmerica…all doubleplusOceania!"

Oceania?

What…?

Rogers worked a kink out of his shoulder and sighed. This was all too weird for him. He couldn't understand much of what these guys were saying, and even after he'd killed a few of them and utterly humiliated the rest…they still acted like they were in charge.

Kinda like the Nazis come to think of it.

But if Rogers was sure of anything, it was that these…Oceanian(?) weirdos weren't members of the Third Reich.

He had an uneasy feeling in his gut that the entity these people swore their allegiance to was much, much worse.


	3. Chapter 3

Rogers had killed three of the eight Oceanians(?), but fortunately not their medic. The medic was the one he had hit in the head with the butt of his rifle, and other than a slow trickle of blood from his nose he seemed okay. Certainly had the energy to scowl and shoot lethal looks at Rogers whenever he had the chance.

In the aftermath of the fight Rogers had gathered his four prisoners near the downed helicopter, throwing their weapons into the creek bed and confiscating their ammunition as he did so. Three of the prisoners were too hurt to resist, and while Rogers had left the medic free so that he could tend to his men, he had trussed the co-pilot like a turkey.

"I'm going to ask you some questions now," he said, keeping his rifle aimed steadily at the co-pilot, "who are you, and what is this…Oceania you belong to? Is it some sort of HYDRA offshoot?" As he aired his questions Rogers examined the rifle he was holding.

It wasn't dissimilar to a Nazi Sturmgewehr battle rifle, though there were clear refinements, like a carrying handle, and a smaller magazine. Turning it over in his hands, Rogers couldn't see any sort of identifying marks on it other than a serial number and the ever-present crimson V. No manufacturing company was named…

"Joycamp surely." The co-pilot hooked a thumb at Rogers, looking over to the medic. The medic nodded curtly, then went back to splinting the arm of one of the surviving prisoners.

"Speak normally." Rogers snarled, frustrated by the impenetrability of whatever dialect these people were speaking. He could make out enough to get the gist of what they were saying…but it was scattered and broken. Like a stroke patient trying to recite Chaucer.

The co-pilot just gave Rogers a murderous stare. Said nothing.

Sighing, Rogers moved over to the little pile of rucksacks he had taken off of the soldiers. There was nothing very exciting inside, just spare clothing, ration tins that wouldn't have looked too out of place in a U.S. Army camp, a few maps, binoculars, ammunition, books…all stamped with the crimson V.

Rogers took one of the books, a folded map and the ration tins. Setting them into the snow he tossed five over to the medic.

"Feed your men," he said, "it's cold. They'll lose energy soon."

Disappointingly, there weren't any fire starters amongst the belongings of the Oceanians. Unless…

Rogers took one of the binoculars in his hands and cheerfully smashed the front lenses. The co-pilot winced, clearly unhappy with Rogers' actions. But still he remained silent.

Binoculars, Rogers had learned long ago, used a series of curved lenses to magnify an image. It was those curved lenses he was after now, and after some careful fishing around in the interior of the mangled binoculars, he emerged with two little circles of glass, each about the size of a poker chip. The sunlight glinted off of them.

Next came the book.

Opening it up, Rogers scanned the title briefly, finding it to be some sort of ideological pamphlet, written in the same disjointed language that the Oceanians spoke in. He ripped a clump of pages out.

The co-pilot shrieked, as though he were physically connected to the book, eyes blazing with terror and anger.

"No! Big Brother! Big Brother!" He shouted. The medic and one of his patients chorused weakly along for a moment, then Rogers set the torn pages down into the snow, once again confused.

He had mutilated plenty of copies of Nazi propaganda pamphlets and books during his time in the war, but the Nazis had hardly ever gotten upset at him over it. They hadn't shrieked and wailed and gnashed their teeth. No…this went further. It was like he had just rent the Bible in two before a faithful Baptist.

Experimentally he reached for more pages. Received a further wail of indignation and outrage from the Oceanians.

"Who's Big Brother?" He asked.

The co-pilot sneered at him. Rogers calmly tore more pages. The man shook his head vigorously.

"Stop!" He cried, "stop…"

"Who's Big Brother?" Rogers repeated, and this time the co-pilot spoke.

"BB-" He began, but Rogers cut him off.

"Regular English." He growled.

The co-pilot gave him a vicious look of abject dislike.

"You can obviously understand me," Rogers said, "so you know English. Now speak it. Or else I'm gonna tear the rest of this book into ribbons." His fingers tightened on the next bunch of pages. The co-pilot winced at the mere sight.

"Stop," he said at last, "stop now. That is the word of the Party. Of Big Brother. Of Oceania."

Rogers smiled to himself, satisfied.

"Who's Big Brother?" He asked again.

"He is everything," the co-pilot gave Rogers a disconcerting look of utterly fervent belief before continuing, "He is the Party and the State and the World. He is Watching."

"Good for him," Rogers said, mentally noting that this 'Big Brother' seemed to be a dictator…with an especially vicious cult of personality, "now tell me. What's Oceania?"

The co-pilot gave Rogers a strange look.

"You must know this already," he said, "why are you asking?"

"My last memories are crashing that bomber over there into the ground. Then I woke up and met you jokers. Now tell me…what's Oceania?"

The medic whispered something indeterminable to the co-pilot and the co-pilot nodded.

"The bomber…" he said, seemed to be struggling for words, "is oldstate, yes?"

Oldstate? Was that how these people referred to the Nazis?

 _No,_ Rogers told himself, a thread of worry curling up into his stomach, _not just the Nazis…_

"It's a Nazi bomber," he said, "I hijacked it. Stole it."

The co-pilot and medic were staring at each other, looking frightened and utterly confused all of a sudden.

"No," the co-pilot said, with a shrill laugh that sounded utterly forced, "doubleplusyoung, unantewar…" He'd slipped back into his original language, but Rogers once again got the gist of what he was saying.

These people, these Oceanians, had clearly heard of the Nazis…but not as more than a distant myth. They thought he was lying about being in the war…or at least were hoping that he was.

Because standing before them was a young man claiming to have fought in an old man's war. And that was deeply frightening. Deeply wrong.

Rogers could feel his gut roiling, terror buzzing through him like an electric shock.

"What year is it?" He asked, when he finally managed to get his mind working again. The co-pilot pointed silently to the book he was holding and Rogers flipped to the inside cover…where publication dates usually were.

June, 1984

Rogers let the book drop from numb fingers.

No.

No!

 **No!**

None of this made sense. None of it was possible. How had he managed to drowse for forty years in a downed bomber? How?!

He took an unsteady step back, suddenly aware that the Oceanians were watching him, half frightened, half fascinated.

"It's 1945," Rogers said at last, voice blank with shock, "April of 1945. It can't… _cant_ be 1984."

He stared down at the co-pilot, who shrunk back instinctively, perhaps frightened that Rogers would hurt him for revealing such an unpleasant truth. But Rogers did nothing. Just asked:

"What's today's date?"

"December…sixteenth?" The co-pilot said uncertainly.

"Fifteenth." The medic corrected quietly.

December…

Why was it so mild out then? The volcanic eruption could only explain part of that.

None of this made any sense. It only fed the chaotic whirl of thoughts buzzing around his head.

"So…you must have come to look at the bomber." He said. Wasn't sure why.

The co-pilot gave Rogers a strange look. Shook his head.

"The test site." He said.

Rogers looked behind him. At the snowless peak in the distance.

"Test site…?" He asked.

"Bigbomb," the medic said quietly, "doubleplusgood ante. Doubleplusgood post."

Rogers felt a powerful chill roll down his spine.

He had been wrong.

So very, very wrong. The peak hadn't been ravaged by an act of nature…but rather by the actions of man. The Oceanians had set off a bomb atop its summit, one big enough to excavate hundreds of thousands of tons of rock and dirt and snow. One big enough to erase all life from its slopes.

Suddenly small things began to make sense. The little crust of ice atop the snow…where it had melted and then refrozen in the wake of the blast. The bomb, he realized, had probably accelerated the process of thawing him out.

But if the weather was any indication, then he would have woken up sooner or later. Probably sometime before the year 2000. Maybe.

God it was all so surreal.

He unfolded one of the Oceanian maps, desperate to distract himself. But rather than a great big world map like he had been hoping for, all that it showed him was a great big stretch of Canadian wilderness, crisscrossed by a few roads.

Forty years might have passed, but the wilds remained the same.

What caught his attention was the mountain range that the Oceanians had bombed. On the map it looked very familiar…and it took him a moment to figure out exactly why.

He, Rogers realized, was looking at the Laurentian Range. A belt of mountains and hills that stretched from southern Quebec all the way to the U.S. border, where they turned abruptly into the Adirondacks.

He managed to smile, but that smile froze.

According to the map there was no such thing as the Laurentian Range. What he was looking at was the Comrade Ogilvy Range…

He set the map down, suddenly aware that he was shivering.

But try as he might, the shakes did not go away.


	4. Chapter 4

It took some time to decide, but in the end Rogers did not make a fire. The only kindling he had were the six Big Brother propaganda books, and Rogers didn't especially feel like needlessly antagonizing his prisoners by burning them.

Not when he was still so completely stunned.

1984…

When he was young, before the war, before the serum, Rogers had sometimes wondered how long he would live. If the average life expectancy of an American in the year 1940 was sixty three years then Rogers would live until the far off year of 1983…

He'd already crossed that distant barrier by a year. It was impossible to grasp.

In those distant days he had imagined what sort of life he might lead. Before the war he'd wanted to be an artist…or a teacher. Something calm and peaceful and fulfilling.

How far away it all seemed now.

Part of him wanted to get up and walk away into the white expanse that surrounded him. Until he collapsed. Until the rigor overcame even his perfectly enhanced body.

But he didn't.

He couldn't.

Not when there was still a mission on. Rogers stared down at his gloves, scuffed and battered but still holding together. Could remember the very first time he'd put a pair of gloves like them on, when the Army had kitted him out with a special suit. When they'd made him Captain America.

Years might have passed. The world might have changed…but he hadn't. He was still Captain America.

And Captain America didn't cut and run.

Rogers looked to the co-pilot again. Noted how the man flinched almost unconsciously away.

The Oceanians were frightened of him. Frightened of how he acted, how he spoke, of his ignorance of their ways. To them 'Oceania' was the world. And running across someone who didn't recognize that was a rebuke of everything they held dear.

"How long before reinforcements come?" He asked. The co-pilot blinked.

"What?" He asked.

"Reinforcements. You had to have radioed in to your headquarters…told them that you'd encountered me." Rogers said impatiently, trying to decide whether the co-pilot's wide eyed confusion was genuine or an act.

The co-pilot shook his head slowly.

"Ungood-"

Rogers cut him off with an impatient jerk of the rifle barrel.

"Speak. Normally." He growled.

"You…you're only one," the co-pilot said, "no one man can stand against us."

Rogers stared, momentarily floored by the arrogance in the co-pilot's words. This went beyond Nazi level megalomania, into something else entirely.

"Clearly you were wrong." He said, relaxing slightly. So reinforcements weren't imminent. That was good. All the same though, Rogers knew that eventually the Oceanians would notice the disappearance of one of their helicopters. Not for a while though, Rogers hadn't seen any military facilities marked on the Oceanian maps. The land around him was blank for miles and miles but for a few roads and cabins.

Rogers paced circles around the Oceanians, ignoring their glares. The medic had fed the wounded, the co-pilot was staring down at the snow, perhaps wondering if he'd said something wrong.

 _You need to find a way out of here,_ Rogers said to himself, _destroy the radio in the helicopter if it's not already dead, leave these guys behind…they're not a threat anymore. Go south. Maybe there's still an America left._

Maybe…

Even the thought of his country not existing anymore sent pangs of nausea through him. Rogers gritted his teeth. Got up. Went over to the helicopter and examined the cockpit carefully. Many of the instruments had been damaged in the crash and there didn't seem to be any power, but he still put three rounds through the radio anyway…just to be sure.

The Oceanians watched this with blank, frightened faces. But none of them moved. What could they even hope to do against him? He'd thrown their weapons into the creek, taken their ammunition away, crippled most of them…

He rummaged through the rucksacks again, checking each pocket and flap carefully. Came away with a compass he hadn't noticed before. Opening it up, he was unsurprised to find that its face was emblazoned with a great big red V.

"What does the 'V' mean anyway?" He asked, going back over to the co-pilot, "victory? Vengeance?"

"Ingsoc." The co-pilot muttered.

"Ing…sosh…" Rogers mimicked, trying to determine what that meant.

The co-pilot sighed, clearly offended by Rogers' ignorance.

"English socialism." He said, fixing Rogers with a contemptuous glare.

"Is that what your 'Big Brother' dictates?" Rogers asked.

"Big Brother doubleplusgood," the co-pilot snarled, "anteRevolution ungood! All ungood!"

Rogers shook his head slightly and turned away. There was no getting through to these people. The instant some sort of progress was made they flew into a rage at some perceived slight against Big Brother or English Socialism or whatever.

All of it was dreadfully confusing.

"I'm going to leave now," Rogers said, deciding that his fitful attempts at extracting information out of the Oceanians weren't getting anywhere, "goodbye. Your people should be here soon enough…" He shrugged, supposing that the Oceanians could make shelter in the downed helicopter if their forces didn't arrive before dark.

"Criminal." Growled the co-pilot at him. Rogers ignored him, instead taking one of the rucksacks and stacking the Oceanian ammunition inside before adding a number of ration tins and the Big Brother books. The Oceanians seemed aggrieved to see him do this (doubtlessly they knew he would burn them before too long) but none of them said anything.

"Big Brother doubleplusgood," the medic said to Rogers as he passed him, "Oceania doubleplusgood. America ungood. Canada ungood. AnteRevolution doubleplusungood."

Rogers just chuckled. The medic said nothing more.

He set off, rifle in hand, rucksack bulging with supplies, with one final look back at the huddled Oceanians. They watched him go, warily, clearly suspecting some sort of trick.

That was good, Rogers decided, it would keep them honest for a while. And by the time they realized that he was really gone, it would be far too late for any of them to do anything.

All the same he looked back over his shoulder every few paces, just to make sure. The Oceanians remained still.

Until he was gone.

Who knew what they did after that…


	5. Chapter 5

Rogers ate one of the Oceanian ration tins as he walked, once he'd passed out of sight of the downed helicopter and cluster of miserable men he'd left behind. Inside of the tin, once he'd opened it, Rogers found a foil wrapped oblong about the size and shape of a dime-store paperback, a little plastic bottle containing a few ounces of clear, oddly greasy liquid, and a second foil wrapped packet about half the size of the first one.

The first packet contained some sort of compressed bread-like substance. Rogers did not know what it was but ate it anyway. It went down easily, vaguely fibrous and utterly tasteless. Like he'd just swallowed a lightly moistened cake of sawdust.

All the same it tamped down the hunger pangs a little bit. Rogers opened the second packet. Was cheered by the sight of dried apples, which he ate with gusto.

Twisting open the cap on the bottle, Rogers had to bite back a smile as he read the words written on the side.

Victory Gin.

He was reminded somewhat of the ubiquitous wartime habit of attaching grandiose titles to mundane things. Gardens had become Victory Gardens, schnapps Victory Schnapps (for the Germans at least), and so forth. It seemed that the Oceanians were no different.

He took a delicate sniff of the liquid inside but recoiled with a grimace. The Victory Gin smelled evil, like wood alcohol and the ethanol fuel that powered torpedoes. He pitched it off to the side, a trail of ersatz gin sparkling behind it like the tail of a comet. Rogers shook his head slightly in self reproach.

No…today was not the day he would take up drinking.

Not even if he had been zipped forty years into the future.

And what a future it was…

He checked the Oceanian map again, noted his surroundings and decided that he'd covered maybe four or five kilometers. Almost nothing compared to the vast emptiness of the wilderness that surrounded him.

He needed to find a road. Something that would lead him to civilization, so he could get an idea of just what this brave new world looked like.

So far all he had to go off of were the lunatic ravings of the Oceanians and the impenetrable babble of their propaganda books. Not exactly great tools for deduction.

Still, he'd managed to learn some things.

Oceania was definitely a dictatorship, its people had a fierce hatred of Canada and the United States, and they seemed to have occupied both. How long this had gone on for Rogers did not know, but he swore to himself that it would change.

If the free world had been laid low by the dark forces of totalitarianism then they wouldn't remain down for long. Freedom never could be contained forever.

The nearest road on the map was a little over thirty kilometers away, due southeast. Rogers checked his compass, adjusted his course accordingly, and kicked into a light jog.

The running was good. It blanked his thoughts, let him focus entirely on his surroundings, not on the terror and uncertainty welling up within him.

It was a stunningly pretty day out, the sky was almost entirely cloudless, the snowpack a glaring, flawless white. Around him Rogers could hear the movements of animals in their burrows beneath the snow, see tracks left by ptarmigan, ravens and rabbits.

He dropped into a little valley at one point, one frosted with pines and the gaunt, leafless forms of birches and oaks. Found a little stream and splashed in, wading downstream through its ice rimed waters for a half dozen kilometers before climbing back out.

Rogers practiced these evasion techniques with ease, almost unaware that he was even following them. But in the back of his mind the situation was being perpetually updated. Soon the Oceanians would come looking for him. That was an inevitability. And if he wanted to have even a fighting chance at survival then he'd need to make things difficult for them.

He wondered briefly if setting up boobytraps would be wise. He had the necessary equipment to create crude toe-popper mines (of the sort he might have scattered behind him if trapped behind Nazi lines in Europe), or little knee deep pits with sharp stakes at the bottom.

But in the end he decided against it.

The Oceanians wouldn't be tracking him by land. At least not primarily. Out here, in the wild, they'd be using their helicopters and jets to look for him. So sticking close to the thickets and valleys and trees would be wiser than scattering traps that likely wouldn't ever be tripped.

Still, he did make sure to double back every now and then, to make his tracks confusing to follow.

Just in case.

As the afternoon began to turn to evening Rogers stopped and found a sheltered position in the cleft of two hills. Down below him were a few dozen scrawny pines, up above was a rock and ice strewn cliff. He dug himself a rudimentary cave but was unable to make it too deep because of how little snow there was on the ground.

Next he trekked over to where the sunlight was still brightest and lit up one of the Big Brother books, using one of the binocular lenses he'd pried loose as a magnifier.

Soon enough he had a cheerful little blaze going. It wasn't really enough to keep more than the tips of his fingers warm, but the mere sight of the flames raised his spirits. He was alive and well, ready to take on the world.

Or die trying.


	6. Chapter 6

Rogers reached the road the next morning beneath the rippling banner of a brilliant sunrise, streamers of orange and fiery red splitting the sky above him. He sat down on the berm alongside the road and stared up at it, drinking from his canteen as he did so.

The sunrises and sunsets here were much brighter than what he remembered. Much more vivid and intense.

It was colder, but still nothing compared to the chill of waking up in the bomber. Rogers moved alongside the road without complaint, staying within the tree-line. There was no sign of traffic. No trucks. Faint tire tracks marked the snow, but they were old. Nothing had moved this way in a long time.

He checked his map again. Made sure he was still moving south. Saw that the road intersected with what appeared to be a fuel depot in another fifteen kilometers.

Was that even a fuel depot? He couldn't tell…nothing manmade was labeled on the map, just the Comrade Ogilvy Range and a few forests, which had numbers tacked onto them.

Rogers wondered who Comrade Ogilvy was as he walked. A compatriot of Big Brother? A war hero? Both? Whoever he was, he had to be pretty important to have claimed an entire range of peaks in his name.

"Once Oceania falls," he said aloud, listening to his voice dampen and disappear within the confines of the snow laden trees, "I'm going to put the name of that range back."

Once Oceania fell…

Jeez. Maybe he could think about putting the top of the bomb blasted mountain back too.

Toppling a totalitarian regime was a big task. He knew this from experience. It wasn't anything to be talked about idly.

Taking down the Third Reich had been a process of years…and it had still been incomplete when he had slammed down into a stretch of Quebecois wilderness and been lost for forty years.

And that had been when he had had the might of the Allied powers alongside him. The U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union…all of that against the legions of fascism.

This time around it was different. So far it was just him against the world. He had no armies to assist him, no scientists, no arsenal of democracy.

Even his own arsenal was still stamped with the emblem of totalitarianism.

A now familiar thwack of rotors broke him from his thoughts. Rogers crouched instinctively down, suddenly aware of his lack of camouflage. A red, white and blue super-suit didn't exactly blend in with snow and trees. Still, he was hidden in shadow…perhaps that would be enough.

But the helicopter passing overhead didn't seem to be searching, it was moving too fast for that. The roar of engines heightened, reached a momentary peak, then were receding. Rogers waited until they faded entirely away, then stood back up, feeling trepidation.

So the Oceanians were beginning to look for their lost helicopter.

Rogers had an uneasy feeling that the next aircraft he heard would be moving a lot more deliberately. Like a hunting dog rather than a greyhound.

He checked over his rifle again. Made sure that it was in working order.

It really was quite similar to the experimental automatic light machine guns that the Nazis had started using towards the end of the war. Lighter though. More finely made. Seemed to fire a larger caliber round as well, not a 30-06 like the Garand used, but almost that size.

Rogers wanted to sit down and take some time to test fire it, but was too concerned about the nearness of the fuel depot(?) to dare. Gunshots carried a long way, and if there were Oceanians hanging around then they'd definitely come by to see what was going on.

So instead he tramped determinedly onwards through the snow.

It took him another two hours to come to a point where the road widened and reached a fork with another path. This path was more heavily traveled, the tracks crossing it looked fresh. Rogers spent some time watching it, examining the map as he did so, trying to deduce where it went, but he simply wasn't familiar enough with Canadian geography to hazard more than a vague guess. East, he decided at last, that fork in the road went east.

In the end he scrambled quickly across it and made a long loop around to a gentle hill that overlooked the fuel depot(?). There he took out his binoculars and looked down at the miserable little outpost below.

Two sets of fuel pumps, one marked red, the other yellow. Next to them a Quonset hut, marked with the ubiquitous crimson V of English Socialism. How a V of all things could come to represent something like _that_ was beyond Rogers. Still…there were probably more than a few confounded Hindus wondering the same thing about the swastika.

No movement, but Rogers could see footprints in the snow. Fresh.

Out beyond the Quonset hut was a decently sized square of flattened snow. Clearly a makeshift landing pad for helicopters.

Rogers searched his pockets for a pencil, found a nub of one, and labeled the installation on his map as a fuel depot. So he had been right…this was where the Oceanians gassed up before delving into the wilderness.

Strangely enough, he couldn't see any vehicles. Unless they were parked on the other side of the Quonset hut.

Over the next half hour Rogers stalked his way around the fuel depot, examining it from every angle. During that time the installation remained dead and empty, completely devoid of life. Either its garrison was holed up inside playing cards or praising Big Brother…or they didn't exist.

Rogers would have preferred the second option, but knew better than to straight up accept it. He'd need to check. Carefully.

During his reconnaissance he'd noted a snowmobile parked alongside the far end of the Quonset hut. That seemed to be the only vehicle in the entire installation.

It was also his ticket out of the wilderness. He could cover considerably more ground on a snowmobile than he could on foot.

Slowly, he began to move down the side of the hill.

There was a simple barbed wire fence separating him from the fuel depot, but it was shoddily made. Rogers forced his shield through two strands, forcing them far apart, then ducked through.

And with that he was in.

He'd seen better security at small town dime-stores.

Rifle in one hand, shield in the other, he moved stealthily towards the Quonset hut, taking the occasional glance back towards the road. Still empty and bare but for the occasional whirl of wind driven snow.

And then he was there, pressed alongside the door of the Quonset hut. It looked flimsy, probably didn't even have a lock.

Rogers took a deep breath.

Slammed the door open with one shoulder and stepped quickly inside.

The inside of the Quonset hut was dimly lit by kerosene lanterns. Smelled very much like a barracks, which was to say…not good. Had a quartet of beds and a glowing wood fired stove.

To go with the beds were four very surprised Oceanians. One was holding a rifle, looked to be about to head outside. He was the only one wearing boots and a coat, the rest were more lightly dressed. One held a book, the other two were playing cards.

The man in the coat raised his rifle. Rogers was already moving, faster than the Oceanian could track. Slammed him hard with his shield, rifle went flying, the soldier traced a graceful arc, then impacted the stove with a bang and a great orange shower of sparks. The two men playing cards had risen, one groping for a pistol, the soldier with the book had dropped it, taking up a knife instead.

Rogers jabbed the knife man in the mouth with the barrel of his rifle, felt the impact jolt up his arm, heard the man's teeth shatter like sugar cubes. Pivoted into a kick that took the man with the pistol high in the chest. He hit the side of the Quonset hut hard enough to dent it. The hut rang like a gong.

And just like that the last soldier was cowering down, arms laced protectively over his face, shrieking for clemency in mercifully normal English.

"No, please don't hurt me!" He begged. Rogers let down his rifle just a little bit. Looked over the wreckage of the hut, the ruins of the garrison. The man with the coat was groaning, smoke issuing from an irregularly shaped burn mark on the back of his coat, his comrade with the broken teeth clutching his mouth, moaning pitiably through what was most definitely a shattered jaw. The man that Rogers had pitched into the wall? Unconscious.

"Where are the keys to the snowmobile?" Rogers asked, snatching up the soldiers' rifles one by one and tossing them through the open door of the hut. The cowering soldier made no move to stop him. Just pointed, hand shaking, to a line of rucksacks hanging from pegs on the wall.

"Get them for me. You try for a weapon I'll break your arms." Rogers made sure to snarl that last part. The Oceanian, already cowed, cringed away from his words. Got up and secured a pair of keys with shaking hands.

"Who are you?" The soldier asked as he gave the keys over.

Rogers hesitated, then decided that he might as well.

"Captain America."

The soldier stared, half horrified, half…awestruck. Like he was encountering a higher power.

Before he left the Quonset hut Rogers took a handful of clothing at random from one of the rucksacks, and a cheap steel cigarette lighter.

"Stay in the hut." He warned the Oceanian, then stepped outside, shutting the door behind him. He felt slightly jittery as he warmed up the snowmobile and got it running, excited even.

This was another blow struck in the name of freedom.

But not the last blow he'd land before he left this place…

Taking the clothes, Rogers cheerfully lit them ablaze and draped them over the fuel pumps before retreating a safe distance away. There, in the middle of the road, he took deliberate aim with his rifle. Directly at the center of the pump.

Squeezed the trigger.

For a moment there was nothing, then came a spurt of liquid flame, a bigger jet, a plume!

And…

 **BOOM!**

The pumps went up, their eruption almost simultaneous, a flash of white flame so bright that Rogers had to duck away, so hot that his face would tingle and burn for hours afterward.

But all that while he couldn't stop grinning, even as he gunned it down the lonely wintery road south.

This had just begun.


	7. Chapter 7

Compared to the torpid walking pace he'd maintained, the speed of the snowmobile was exhilarating. The wind stung Rogers' eyes, swept back his hair, drove ice right to the very core of him.

Over his shoulder black smoke was billowing into the sky from the ruined fuel depot. Every now and then another explosion would shiver through the air. Rogers thought about the injured Oceanians in the Quonset hut. Hoped that they were alright. They didn't deserve to burn to death.

But those thoughts faded from his mind as he roared further and further down the road, headed south. He had a full tank of fuel, he could go a long way on it.

He tried to remember just how far his part of the Laurentian Range (he would call it by its proper name, Rogers decided, the Oceanians held no claim over the mountains to his right) was from the U.S. border. Found that he didn't entirely know.

It couldn't be too far, certainly no more than two hundred kilometers. Probably less.

But the distance didn't concern him nearly as much as the fact that he didn't know what was ahead of him on the road anymore. He was about to cross the edge of the map he'd taken off of the Oceanians. Beyond here was uncharted territory. For him at least.

He kept going, mind working steadily away, eyes fixed on the road ahead.

...

Comrade Waters was a tall man. Slender. Built in a delicate, almost effeminate way. He was grim faced, eyes slitted against the wash from the rotors of his helicopter.

They had landed not far from the dark hulk of a downed Victory Air Guard helicopter, tipped onto its side, one jagged nub of a rotors sticking straight into the air like an accusing finger.

Waters exited the helicopter first, gripping at the scarf wrapped around his neck, particles of snow and ice stinging exposed skin.

"Brother?" One of the men accompanying Waters asked. Waters made a half turn, shook his head slightly. The men in the shadowy interior of the helicopter stayed put. Waters proceeded alone.

He could see the contents of the downed Air Guard bird before him. Saw that some was damaged, some missing. Very little remained intact.

Ungood.

But of the intact articles before him Waters could see a medic and a co-pilot, both lightly injured. Both with a jaundiced expression of fear creeping into their eyes as they watched his approach. Both had snapped into a salute: arms crossed at the wrist above their heads, fists clenched, forming the V of Ingsoc. Of Victory.

"Brother," the co-pilot said, slowly dropping his salute, voice shivery and rough with cold and privation, "we…" He seemed to be trying to force something ugly from his mouth. An admission of error perhaps.

Waters had seen this before. Men whose fervor for the Party lasted only until they themselves were at risk. Men who were unwilling to admit fault. Men who did not realize that if it was not them in error then it was the Party.

And the Party was never in error.

Never.

"It was a crash comrade. Nothing more." Waters said, taking another step forward, eyeing the cluster of frost rimed wounded on the ground as he did so. They were badly indisposed. Damaged articles of inventory. Broken arm on one. Bruises and cuts and evident internal injuries on others. Plusungood.

The crash, Waters thought to himself, had to have been a bad one.

"Uncrash, brother," the medic said quietly, "we were attacked."

Waters stopped moving.

Attacked?

"By who?" He asked.

The co-pilot tried to say something but couldn't quite convey it in Newspeak. Waters waved one gloved hand impatiently.

"We'll use English for now comrade," he said, voice clipped, "who attacked you?"

"We were flying to the test site, comrade," the co-pilot began haltingly, eyes flickering down to the ground, shame in his voice, "we saw a man walking down below. We called for him to leave. He disobeyed. We landed and tried to kill him…" The co-pilot trailed off, jaw clenching reflexively at the memory.

Waters watched more than listened. Paid special attention to the co-pilot's eyes. How they fled from the emissary of the Party and sought refuge instead in the blankness of the snow. How his tone reeked of pity for himself rather than sorrow for the lost dignity of Oceania.

"How was this man dressed?" Waters asked. Wondered idly if this mysterious attacker was a Eurasian spy, sent to cause mischief on the Oceanian home front.

"In the manner of a capitalist, brother," the co-pilot said, and now his eyes were back on Waters, "he dressed in red, white and blue. He had a shield with a white star in the center."

Waters considered that. Considered that the co-pilot was looking back at him now. As if he had never doubted the Party.

What a deceiver he was…

"Where did he go?" Waters asked.

"South." Said the medic.

Waters nodded curtly. Knew that that last question was almost needless. A man dressed in counter-revolutionary garb, holding a shield that screamed of failed oldstate perversions and decadence, couldn't remain quiet for long.

"Turn and face the mountains." He said, voice mild. The medic did so immediately. The co-pilot hesitated for a flickering shadow of an instant, then obeyed.

"What will you do now, brother?" The co-pilot asked.

Waters reached into his coat. Withdrew a little black pistol. Flicked the safety off.

"Inventory adjustments." He said.

Shot them both in the back of the head, one after the other, quick enough that neither man had the slightest time to even begin to turn around.

The medic fell face-first into the snow, a tendril of smoke rising from the hole in the back of his head. The co-pilot remained standing for just a moment longer, made a strange croaking noise, then toppled onto his side.

Waters executed the wounded in much the same way.

He climbed back into the helicopter once he was done and looked to the man sitting opposite him.

"They would have become thought criminals soon." Waters said to him.

"Goodthink, comrade." His fellow agreed.

They lifted off, and were soon little more than a dark speck receding into a clear cornflower sky.


	8. Chapter 8

As Rogers went he could see the road he was on growing more and more heavily traveled, cars tracks and bootprints and hoof prints pouring in from side roads. If he were to go up those pine shrouded tracks then he suspected that he would run into logging camps and other minor industrial facilities, the tire tracks were simply too huge and blocky to be anything other than work vehicles.

After a few kilometers of this, feeling more and more nervous with each turn of the road he made, Rogers eased the snowmobile off of the road and into the trees. There he sat for a few moments and thought.

The Oceanians were definitely on to him by now, and he'd left them a pretty direct trail of crumbs to his current position…the snowmobile wasn't exactly stealthy. All they'd have to do was follow the tracks and they'd find a wind ruffled super-soldier from the past sitting astride one of their vehicles, looking troubled.

It took Rogers just a few moments to decide what he was going to do. He was in a trafficked area, he knew this now. The Oceanians had ground units around here, that much was a certainty…and while he could dismantle those at will provided that he had at least something of an element of surprise, he'd still prefer for them to be weakened when the inevitable contact came.

Getting off of the snowmobile, he snapped a branch from the nearest tree, a smaller one with a feathery plume of needles at the end, and used it as a makeshift brush to eliminate his tracks from behind him while he retreated a few meters away, into the hollow of another cluster of trees.

This wasn't a complete obliteration of his presence, anyone who looked closely would see the difference between the pine swept snow and its surroundings…but it would do for what he had in mind.

Time for the toe-poppers to come out.

He had learned how to create them while being trained by the OSS, and while he had never had opportunity to use them before, he still remembered the steps to their manufacture.

First you took a cartridge, the larger caliber the better. OSS had recommended using machine gun bullets if at all possible, but Rogers had none of those on hand. So instead he emptied one of the Oceanian magazines. Spread the twenty rounds before him out in the snow.

Next you created a cylinder for the cartridge to rest in. In the end Rogers decided that this would have to be served by the earth itself, though there was a chance of the cartridge falling to the side when stepped on.

And lastly…something sharp to set the whole thing off. In the end Rogers removed the bullet from one of the other cartridges and set it at the bottom of the tiny hole he'd dug into the snow, just off of the road. He'd spent some time examining the snowmobile tracks before he disturbed them…so that he could try and predetermine where any Oceanian searchers would step.

He buried his toe-poppers carefully, sprinkling water over the disturbed soil so it would re-freeze and grow solid. At least until the Oceanians came knocking.

If anyone were to step on a toe-popper then the process was quite simple. The weight of their boot would press the buried cartridge down onto the point of the bullet beneath. The point of the bullet would set off the primer, the primer would set off the gunpowder…and the gunpowder would propel the bullet into an Oceanian foot.

OSS had admitted to Rogers that these mines were by no means the most effective ways of disabling an enemy, since without a chamber to be fired from a bullet lost most of its penetrating power, but the psychological shock for the enemy was always extreme. It told them that their enemy was smart and resourceful…that their enemy would never, ever stop trying to find ways to hurt and kill them.

Rogers put the snowmobile tracks back as best he could, then picked his way back around the snowmobile and deeper into the forest, erasing his footprints as he went.

Every now and then he stopped, listened to the forest around him. He was close to the road, but other than the occasional movement of a bird in the trees or an animal somewhere beneath the snow, Rogers heard nothing. Certainly no human activity.

Good.

He didn't want civilians mixed up in all of this.

He kept going, due south, tracing the path of the road as it kept going and going through an unending forest.

At one point he thought he smelled salt on the wind. Was he that close to the ocean? Dumb luck that he'd been able to pilot the crippled plane over land before its engines gave out. Somehow he didn't think that he'd have woken up if he'd crashed down into the North Atlantic.

Not unless he froze into a block of ice like a cartoon character. The thought made him smile, then melancholy struck anew.

People had to have worried about him. He could imagine Stark and Peggy darting all around eastern Canada, trying to find him. Could imagine…

Peggy…

He hadn't seen her for weeks before his final mission. That had already seemed like an impossibly long time. And yet…how could it stack up to forty full years?

Was she even still alive? Something told him that if Oceania existed then she wasn't. Even that bleak bit of speculation burnt a dark hole in the bottom of his gut.

Rogers clenched his jaw. Forced himself to continue on. There would be time for grief later.

Froze as he heard an engine. Listened carefully. Definitely a truck, not too far away. He moved closer to the road, just enough to where he could see slivers through the trees.

Tracked a lumber truck with his eyes, stacked tall with pine trunks, engine coughing athematic bursts of black smoke into the air behind it. It kept going, then was lost from sight.

There had to be a mill nearby. A town too. The workers for the mill had to live somewhere after all.

Rogers kept moving. Hung onto his rifle. Tried hard not to think of the past.

He could do that later. Once all of this was over.

Once Oceania fell.

...

They had just barely gotten airborne when news of the fuel depot explosion reached them.

"Possibly our capitalist, brother." Said Waters' companion. Comrade Waters nodded, a little distracted. He was running over the co-pilot's description of their attacker. Dressed in red, white and blue. Carrying a shield with a white star in the center.

He wondered how such a deranged individual could have learned so much about the oldstates and their champions. And why they would want to target anything up here. This was the back of the beyond so far as Oceania went.

There were mills and clearcutting operations, factories and sites for testing the bigbombs, but not much in the way of infrastructure or importance.

Waters unclasped a briefcase that shared his seat, set it in his lap. Within was a lovely dictation device, and a little black Party issue notebook. He took out the notebook. Opened it up. Jotted down his first few observations on the lunatic:

Likely prole. From area perhaps. Must learn where he acquired shield.

Destroyed Victory Air Guard crew with ease. Former Victory Guard(?)

Deep interest in oldstate decadence. Was a thought criminal long before this.

Conclusions: issue kill on sight order for units within five hundred mile radius. Issue lotto style reward for proles who give info concerning criminal. Must contain this.

Waters tore the page out and put it in his pocket before rewriting his notes in Newspeak. He gave this version up to the pilot, who dictated it to Party command. The Newspeak version contained only his recommendations; he doubted that the Party would welcome anything approaching speculation.

Besides, what he had written in his third bullet point was treason. Professing any casual knowledge of the oldstate at all was tantamount to becoming a thought criminal. The oldstate had existed, that much was readily apparent. After all, what else did the Party ever start their Two Minute Hates railing against? But at the same time, any sort of recognition of it as a previously existing entity was frowned upon. Was acted upon swiftly. Anyone who knew things about the oldstate became an unperson.

Anyone who knew things about the oldstate was a good comrade. Anyone who knew that the oldstate used stars and stripes and flags and ideology to persecute their citizenry was a very good comrade indeed.

Anyone who knew things about the oldstate was a thought criminal and an unperson. Anyone who knew that the oldstate used stars and stripes and flags and ideology at all would soon have never existed.

Waters put one hand atop the pocket in which his notes were. They seemed to contain a curious sort of energy. A warmth.

They passed over the fuel depot, staying studiously away from the plume of oily black smoke rising from the ruined fuel pumps. Down below Waters could see a small cluster of men sitting miserably atop a hill just next to the depot.

"Can you land there comrade?" Waters asked the pilot, shouting over the chop of the rotors. The pilot eyed the hill for a moment. The top of it was flat enough, and free from trees. He nodded.

"Yes brother," he shouted back, "doubleplushasty."

They set down. Waters learned something interesting from the only uninjured soldier present before he executed him for thought crime and aiding the enemy.

The remaining three soldiers stood very still and looked Waters in the eyes as he shot their comrade. Waters cocked his head at them.

"You are true arbiters of the Revolution, comrades." He said, and left them alive.

"Captain America…" He said, low under his breath as the helicopter lifted off once again.

"Brother?" His companion asked him.

"Oceania prevails." Waters said with a smile.

They kept going.


	9. Chapter 9

Rogers stared at the mill complex for a long time.

It was down below him, perhaps a quarter mile away, in the mouth of a gently dipping valley that ran all the way to a glimmering glint of ocean in the southern distance. A half dozen buildings and a shed, made of cinderblocks. The main building dwarfed the others, four stories, a great metal chimney puffing white smoke into the air.

And…oddly enough there was a net ringing the building as well, frost rimed mesh suspended a story above the ground. What was that for?

The rest of the buildings seemed to be barracks style constructions for the workers to live in. Grim. Low. The snow outside of their doors was stained with mud and all sorts of filth.

There was a canal running through the complex was well. Water flowing in from the north was crystal clear and sparkling, but when it left the mill it flowed more hesitantly, sludgy and orange with pollution.

The smart thing to do, Rogers knew, would be to circle quietly around the complex of dreary, gray buildings and disappear off towards the south. But even as he made to move, to start picking his way further into the trees, a door opened down below.

Rogers froze. Pressed himself to the snow, even though he knew there was no way anyone by the mill could see him. He could hear voices drifting up the icy slope to him.

"My little girl's sick, comrade…" Came one, just barely audible, sharp with concern, crackling with barely contained panic.

"You broke from your shift for _this,_ brother," replied a second voice, harsher than the first, "ungood…"

Rogers moved a little closer, squinted through the glare of sun on snow. Could see two men standing just beyond the doorway of the mill, both clad in gray work clothes. The man with the sick daughter was stooped and shrunken, wringing his hands. The man before him was shaking his head contemptuously, and Rogers could see a black armband wound round his bicep, a crimson V blaring out from it.

"Please comrade, all I need is half of my pay early…I can work extra shifts for it next week…" This from the stooped worker, openly begging now. Desperate. It tore Rogers' heart to watch him grovel.

"Half of your pay early…" scoffed the man with the armband, "if you disrespect the rules comrade, then soon the collapse of society is at hand. And then what will be left?"

Rogers ground his teeth, anger bubbling up to fill him with poisonous warmth. This was tyranny too. Not as blatant as the cult of personality fostered by Big Brother, but more banal. More familiar.

Rogers had seen men like the one with the armband before. Men who lorded over production floors, puffed up by what small power that gave them.

The stooped worker tried to say something but was shoved back through the door, the man with the armband following a moment later. The door shut once more. Rogers stayed very still for a long moment, then sighed.

He had to go in. This couldn't be allowed to stand. The people working within the mill had to be given the knowledge that freedom was not yet dead in this land.

Rogers stood and began walking briskly down the hill, shield in one hand, rifle in the other, not even bothering to hide himself. He was crackling with anger, face set in a frown.

And once again the mill door was swinging open, the man with the armband stepping out, this time flanked by a pair of solidly build men with clubs swinging from their hips. They were dressed in dark blue, like policemen. But Rogers had never seen policemen who wore knuckle-dusters before. Somehow he suspected that the rule of law was less important to these men than raw, senseless violence. They looked at him uncertainly, eyes flickering from his suit to the rifle in his hand.

"Alright brother, what the hell are you doing?" The man with the armband demanded. Rogers took a quick look at the upper floors. Saw more men in dark blue crowding the windows, staring down at him. Clearly he'd alerted the mill's security. No matter.

He wanted this to be public. This was going to be a message sent directly to Big Brother.

"That man you just spoke to," Rogers said, staring the man with the armband down, "he has a sick daughter. And you refused to help him buy medicine. What kind of man are you?"

For a moment the man with the armband stared, alarmed, then anger snapped into place behind his eyes.

"Put down that rifle, _brother."_ He growled.

Rogers smiled grimly, turned over the rifle in his hands and then removed the magazine, ejecting the chambered round.

"Okay," he said, his gaze returning to the man with the armband, "I wont need this to beat you guys down." And with that he threw the rifle like a spear, straight through the fourth story window. Glass shattered, and in the half second of distraction that he'd fostered, Rogers took a single step forward and jammed the edge of his shield into the nearest man's gut.

The club wielding thug folded at the waist, face going crimson with shock and sudden pain, arms flailing out to the sides. The man with the armband tried to dance backwards, accompanied by the other thug, but Rogers was already moving to intercept them, his shield flashing, a silvery arc in the sunlight. It connected with both men, sending them through the door with a concussive boom and a squall of folding metal.

Rogers stepped in through the shattered doorway, into a welter of roaring machinery, sawdust and confused workers.

They stared up at him, shock writ en masse across lined, weary faces. Rogers looked over them, figuring that he had maybe five seconds until the goons from upstairs rushed down to engage him.

"Go to your families," he shouted over the machinery, "and know that Captain America was here!" He stepped away from the doorway and watched as the workers rushed for it, cringing away from him as he made his way further into the mill.

Already he could hear men stomping down the stairwells, shouting invective and confused orders at one another. Rogers took a deep breath and looked around him. He was at the northern edge of the main floor. In front of him was a great cluster of milling machinery, some still running. And to each side, east and west, he could see stairs leading to the upper floors.

Rogers headed west, to where he could hear the most voices.

Almost immediately he encountered resistance, a small crowd of security goons on the stairwell. They surged forward at the sight of him, still didn't fully know what he'd done to their three friends by the front door.

As he walked Rogers passed a lathing machine. Tore a steel lever free from its side, a small shower of bolts and loose parts clattering to the floor in his wake. Some of the goons paused at the sight of that, eyes going wide at that display of strength.

Rogers adjusted the lever in his hand, flipping it around so the rubber padded handle was facing outwards. He didn't want to kill these men if he could avoid it, just hurt them. Teach them a lesson about abusing their fellow man.

For a moment the scene froze, a dozen factory security men facing off against a lone figure, the workers from the second floor crowded at the top of the stairs, watching with wide eyes and bated breath, entirely unsure of who to root for. If anyone.

Then one of the security men lunged forward with a strangled cry and Rogers knocked him back into his fellows with his shield, deflecting a blow from a club as he did so. He felt astoundingly calm, utterly focused. Like he could see absolutely everything that his enemies were going to do.

There. The man to his left was tensing for a jab with his baton. Rogers broke his cheekbone with a blow from the machine lever. Over there, to his right he could see the gleam of steel as a machete was unsheathed. He dodged back, felt the sting of a baton blow hit his shoulder, threw out and elbow and sent one assailant flying back into a bank of machinery. Hardly heard the hollow boom of impact. Was too focused on other things.

Saw the machete man moving forward, face contorted, blade gleaming. Blocked the blade with his shield, heard the machete's blade shatter. Kicked the man's legs out from under him and cracked his ribs with a blow on the way down.

Could hear the security men's harsh breathing, the chaotic thudding of their hearts. Rogers was almost shocked by how obviously they telegraphed their blows. He was used to facing foes with actual training, who struck suddenly and with purpose. These men flailed and slashed, screaming and shouting, eyes wild and batons a blur of motion.

Rogers felt like a stone stuck in the very center of a hurricane, utterly unaffected by the wild tantrum the world was throwing around him.

He was on the stairwell now, men on either side of him. He protected his head with his shield, broke a man's arm with the machine lever before pivoting and taking ahold of one of the goons who ventured too close. Threw him bodily down the stairs, where he collided headlong with a cluster of his fellows.

And suddenly he was at the top of the stairs, the second floor stretching out before him, a battered handful of security goons left, breathing heavily, staring at him with unhidden fear.

"Come on," Rogers growled, "either fight me or run."

The goons opted to run and Rogers let them go, dropping the blood slicked machine handle with a clunk. Ahead of him he could see a cluster of workers pressed against the back wall, by the windows, staring at him with something akin to horror.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," Rogers assured them, "I'm a friend."

"Who…?" One of the workers began, then trailed off, shivering.

"Captain America," Rogers said, "I'm here to help you."

For a long moment there was silence, then one of the workers stood. It was, Rogers realized without surprise, the stooped man from earlier. The one the man with the armband had been berating.

"Oh thank God," he said, which elicited a discomforted mutter from his fellows, "can you help me find medicine for my daughter? She's got pneumonia, she's very ill, she…" He seemed to realize he was rambling and stopped himself. Next to him other workers were rising as well, still wary but not outright terrified anymore.

"You can break open the medicine safe, yes?" Asked another worker, eyes wide with hope. And it was then, as the workers came closer to him, that Rogers realized just how scrawny and unhealthy most of them looked. He was head and shoulders taller than every one of them, a sure sign that malnourishment wasn't exactly uncommon around here.

"Yes. Show me where it is." Rogers said, and the workers muttered amongst each other, eyes lighting up with something that looked very much like hope.

That felt good to see.

The third floor was virtually empty aside from a few desks and a scattering of papers. This was administration, Rogers supposed, while the top floor seemed to belong to the management. He couldn't wait to give them a visit.

"This is Captain America," he called up the stairwell to the top floor, voice menacing, "I'm coming up. If there's anyone up there planning on resisting then lay down your weapons right now."

A moment's silence, then a cry of defiance.

"Traitor! Criminal! Oceania prevails!"

That last part irked Rogers a little bit. He stepped into view of the stairwell, shield hefted before him, staring up at the toppled over desk that blocked the top of the staircase.

"God bless America! God bless Canada! God bless the free nations of the world!" He shouted. That seemed to have an effect on the people garrisoning the fourth floor, they started shrieking praise for Big Brother. The workers standing by him also seemed discomforted, but not nearly enough to express dissent.

A moment later the shiny gleam of a rifle barrel poked over the top of the desk and Rogers ducked behind his shield, but the bullet just whizzed wide to his left, popping dust from the wall. Whoever had the rifle was a lousy shot.

Rogers rushed the stairs, caught a second bullet on the center of his shield, and slammed into the desk like a fully loaded freight train. Even moving uphill, even burdened with a rucksack and a shield, he hit hard enough to send it flying backwards. The rifleman crouching behind was similarly flattened and Rogers casually picked up the rifle, noting that his own empty rifle was in the hands of an elderly man in a black uniform pressed up against the opposite wall, next to the shattered window.

Rogers smiled grimly, taking the rifle's barrel in one hand, the grip in the other. Grunting with effort, he snapped the weapon in half, tossed its broken bits to the floor, next to its unconscious wielder.

There were maybe ten men on the fourth floor, all dressed in black, all older and fairly healthy looking. These had to be the people who ran the mill. The man that Rogers had knocked out was dressed in blue, the very last security goon that the defeated mill had to offer. In the far corner, close to where the mill higher ups and gathered, was a row of three large safes. One of those, Rogers knew, had to be the medicine safe.

Across the room the older man aimed the empty rifle uncertainly at Rogers. Rogers raised an eyebrow.

"Go ahead," he said, "pull the trigger. Shoot me."

The older man did, flinching as the rifle produced nothing but a muted click. He stared down at the rifle in shock. Pulled the trigger again.

Click.

Rogers stepped closer, the older man's fellows scattering, blocked from retreating down the stairwell by a crowd of unhappy workers, some carrying hammers and makeshift clubs.

Click. Click. Click-click-click-click!

Rogers yanked the rifle firmly away from the older man and shook his head contemptuously at him.

"Of course you wouldn't know how to use a rifle," he said, "you've always had others do your dirty work for you. But that's over. Because now you're going to open those safes in the corner and do some good for once."

The older man let out a long, low groan. Sank to the floor, face ashen. If there was such a thing as the absolute opposite of pity, then Rogers felt it for this man.

"They'll kill me…" He muttered.

"If you open the safe?" Rogers asked.

The older man nodded.

"Yes…if I cooperate with the enemy…"

"And they'll kill you if you don't," Rogers said, jerking a thumb back at the crowd of workers staring down the mill management, "I wont step in to help you out."

At this the older man began to shiver. Hugged his knees to his chest.

"Ten seconds," Rogers said, "if you aren't over at the safes, working to get them open in ten seconds then I'm going to say my goodbyes and leave you to the tender mercies of your…comrades."

"Nobody can escape Big Brother!" One of the higher ups suddenly shrieked, "he's watching! He's watching us all!" And with that he attempted to rush through the workers, only to be seized and thrown roughly back against the wall.

Rogers could see blades making appearances now. The workers were growing restless, ready for wanton bloodshed at the expense of their oppressors. He began ticking off seconds on his fingers, making it very clear to the older man how much time he had left.

"Ten…nine…eight…" He began, and suddenly the older man was scrabbling towards the safes.

"Fine! Okay!" He cried, shooting Rogers a frightened look. He too had seen the knives. Knew what was going to come if he didn't cooperate. Even if it meant that Big Brother would come to collect his pound of flesh later.

One by one the safes popped open, revealing stacks of currency, sheafs of documents, cardboard boxes of medicine. This last sight brightened the workers' eyes, sharpened their movements.

But before they could rush for the medicine safe Rogers planted himself firmly in front of it.

"Everybody is going to share this out," he said decisively, "nobody is going to take more than they need. Got it?" He asked.

The workers nodded, a little reluctantly, and as Rogers watched they divvied antibiotics and painkillers up with remarkable efficiency. In the end not so much as a scrap of prescription paper was left in the safe. The documents they ignored, the cash was divided as well.

As Rogers turned to look out the shattered window, slightly relieved that nobody had been murdered, the stooped worker came up to him, a stack of greasy bills in his hands.

"Thank you." He said, and thrust the money into Rogers' hands. Rogers took it, staring down the bills with some slight confusion.

For some reason he had still expected to see George Washington or Abraham Lincoln…yet this money had no people on it at all. Just the V. And a denomination…

The topmost bill on the stack was worth one hundred Oceanian dollars. Rogers winced, wondering just how bad inflation in Oceania was to make the production of hundred dollar bills so commonplace.

"Now we finish this." Growled a worker, breaking Rogers from his thoughts. He looked up to see something disconcerting.

The knives and clubs had not gone away simply because the safes had been opened.

The workers were going to kill their oppressors.

But something about that sat wrong with Rogers. He cleared his throat, catching the workers' attention.

"In a _free_ country," he said, "we always give the accused a trial before punishing them."

The workers froze. The mill managers stared. The room was entirely silent for a moment.

"You didn't give none of them downstairs no 'trial'." Protested one worker as he realized what Rogers was trying to do.

"That was different," Rogers said, "that was to give you this opportunity that lies before you. If we kill these men before you without giving them a fair shake then how different does that make us from them?"

Silence.

"How do we do a trial then?" Another worker asked.

"Somebody will represent you and your grievances against these men. You will also allow these men to present a defense." That prompted a small storm of unhappy noise, but Rogers motioned for silence.

"I'm going home to my daughter," said the stooped prisoner abruptly, "this trial stuff's too much work. I don't care what you do with 'em." He was clutching his boxes of medicine protectively and Rogers nodded slightly.

"Okay. Anyone else?"

But rather than an answer, Rogers heard the distant thrum of helicopter rotors.

...

An hour earlier, directed by Comrade Waters and his helicopter borne headquarters, Oceanian soldiers had discovered the stolen snowmobile ditched in the woods. The capitalist driving it had not been so crafty, he-

On second thought, the capitalist was clearly of the devious variety. What a scoundrel he was, using underhanded guerrilla tactics against honorable, upstanding Oceanian soldiers. Two good men had been badly injured by his machinations.

And now the brute was assaulting a lumber mill. Innocent workers were being slaughtered! The machinery destroyed! The very heart of Oceanian production at risk!

Or so said the management.

Waters turned his helicopter that direction. They would have to make their visit a brief one however. They were almost out of fuel.

...

"You all need to leave the building," Rogers said, reaching into his rucksack for a magazine, "now." The workers hesitated, but as the chop of helicopter rotors began to grow louder, they moved in a barely controlled stampede.

One of the mill managers made to move as well but Rogers shook his head.

"Stay put. This is for your own protection…you think your 'comrades' wont rip you apart if you go down there? 'Cause they will."

The managers stayed put, shivering with fear, refusing to so much as look at Rogers. That was fine. So long as they weren't trying to kill him…

Rogers moved over towards the broken window, looked out of it. At the rapidly approaching helicopter.

"Who's in that helicopter?" He asked the nearest manager. This was the man who he had forced to unlock the safes.

"That's a _Party_ helicopter." He gasped, eyes widening.

The manager's reaction made Roger's smile. A Party helicopter had to make for a pretty juicy target. He took careful aim. From what he had seen back in the wilderness the windshields of Oceanian helicopters were not bulletproof.

Taking a deep breath he let his hands settle, his heart rate still for a moment. Pulled the trigger.

...

Two hundred yards away a white splotch suddenly appeared, dead center in the helicopter's windscreen. Comrade Waters jumped, the pilot jerked his controls and sent the helicopter arcing away from the mill. Somebody in there had just taken a shot at them.

At him!

The impudence! The rebellion! It stung, shoved a burning coal of outrage deep down into the core of his very being. How. Fucking. _Dare._ They!

"Loop back around," Waters snarled, clawing his way up close to the pilot, "we're killing him right now."

The pilot stared back at Waters, started to disagree, then remembered just who he was talking to.

"The windscreen wont take more than a few more shots comrade." He said.

Waters fixed him with a withering stare.

"We're going in close and raking the top floors," he said, with an icy sort of patience in his voice, like a murderously angry parent explaining some simple concept to a small child, "he wont get another shot off."

That last one had to have been luck anyhow. They were several hundred yards away, moving fast, a bobbing, weaving target. No marksman on earth could possibly manage to-

A sharp clang echoed off of the side of the helicopter and Waters felt his eyes bulge for a moment before calmness was restored. If the helicopter wasn't moving so violently he might have gone for his notepad. Added some more observations to his growing list concerning Captain America the murderous capitalist.

A moment later the remote controlled machine gun attached to the helicopter's nose began to rattle, issuing a stream of red tracer rounds. From his position at the pilot's shoulder Waters could see everything, a silky flow of scarlet zipping towards the mill building.

He smiled.

...

When Rogers saw the Party helicopter wheel around, he noticed two very worrying things. The first was that his bullet had not penetrated. It had not shattered the windshield or killed the pilot. Instead it had left a white fleck on the glass.

The second thing he saw was the bulge of a machine-gun barrel sticking from the nose of the helicopter. So when the Party chopper began to wheel around to face him once more, after he'd taken an unsuccessful shot at its rotors, Rogers began to run.

And not a moment too soon, for a moment later the room behind him was full of light and noise.

He dove down the stairs, tumbling head over heels, nearly losing his grip on his rifle and shield. A bullet tumbled past him with a buzzing hiss that made his ears itch, shrapnel from the cinderblock walls ricocheted all around, he could feel cuts being opened up on his face by slivers of flying concrete.

Then he was scrambling over the third floor. Caught sight of the helicopter dipping low to match his movements. Put his shield up, and not a moment too soon. Hammer of God against his shield, nearly knocked him over, drove him back against the wall.

Then, suddenly, he was out in the sunlight, the wall behind him giving way as bullets smashed it apart. He was falling backwards out of the building, bullets searing directly overhead.

Oh God.

Then he hit something shockingly soft, surprisingly yielding. Bounced. Was in the air once more, ice crystals and concrete flecks flying with him, rifle spinning away into the air.

 _You landed on the net,_ Rogers told himself, shocked at how calm his inner voice remained, _twist and land on your feet. Otherwise the Oceanians are going to shoot you dead._

And then the ground was rushing up, Rogers hit it at an angle, rolling a half dozen times before coming to a painful half, the world spinning around him. For a moment he stayed still, stunned, then the Party chopper roared around the bullet-pocked side of the mill, a flurry of snow and ice spraying out from underneath its rotors.

Rogers whipped his shield in front of him, was nearly blasted off of his feet by a spray of bullets before twisting out of the way. He looked desperately for his rifle, saw it sticking, barrel first, into the snow just a few feet away.

The Party chopper was only a few meters above the snow, roaring like some wounded beast, swaying from side to side as it tried to get a bead on him. Rogers snatched up his rifle, was knocked to the side as a new spray of machine-gun fire slashed against his shield. Felt something carve a searing swathe of red hot agony along the top of his shoulder, then Rogers was crouched behind his shield once more, yanking back the action on his rifle.

The helicopter fired once more. Rogers bore it with gritted teeth, rolled to the side, fired a cluster of shots into the windshield of the Party chopper.

And…

Suddenly it was lifting away, curving around with uncommon haste, its windshield in ruins. Rogers stood, breathing hard, bleeding from a dozen tiny shrapnel cuts, shaking with exertion.

He fired a desultory shot after the retreating chopper but thought that he missed, it was too far away to tell for sure. Then he leaned against the rough cinderblock wall of the mill and tried to catch his breath.

Well…that had been something.

Rogers hiked up his rucksack and looked toward the road, which was still entirely empty. No sign of the lumber truck he'd seen earlier, perhaps it had already unloaded and left before he'd begun his assault.

In any case he had no vehicle. But that was of no consequence, he didn't want to be anywhere near the main roads anyway. Not after the chaos he'd just caused. Pushing away from the wall, making sure he could still walk straight after the battering that the helicopter had given him, Rogers made for the woods again.

After that he continued south.

...

In the chopper, somewhere above the vicinity of the mill, Comrade Waters was staring into the empty, glassy eyes of the co-pilot. Who the capitalist had killed when his shots had penetrated the helicopter's windscreen.

That had been an unfortunate development. Unfortunate, but not catastrophic. The helicopter was still largely functional, they had some ammunition left for the machine gun, but very little fuel. They'd have to land and pump some more. And take the chopper in for repairs.

The battle had been inconclusive. And that worried Waters. He was used to the Party winning at will, stomping the defiance out of a few poorly armed workers or a collective farm that had gone rogue. This went beyond that, to something new and very dangerous.

They had shot their mysterious capitalist out of a third story window, and yet the man had gotten back up and still managed to repulse them. How did that work? How was that possible?

It was true that soldiers of Oceania did things like that all of the time on the Malabar Front, but those were _Oceanians_. This was a capitalist. How was he so strong and skilled and determined?

Waters smoothed the pages of his notebook against the wind roaring in from the broken windscreen and wrote one simple word.

Shield.


End file.
